


To Build A Fire

by Measured



Category: Neverwhere - Gaiman
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 04:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured/pseuds/Measured
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au. "I am Lady Serpentine, you shall work for me and I shall teach you how to live. I will make you the greatest hunter that has ever been."</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Build A Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> This references a certain story by Jack London(which has the same title. I'm borrowing it.) Otherwise, really au, and strange idea I had flitting around my mind since the end of the book. There some er, sensuality, but it's vague enough for a PG-13 rating, I think. If anyone else thinks otherwise I'll change it.

They told her to stay back, they told her that the cold was too much. All the old fighters, the other hunters and bodyguards shook their heads at the young thing.

She would die by the cold if the wolves didn't pull her apart, each limb torn away and run off with as a prize.

And she in turn shook her head at them.

Cowards.

Hunter lived for this high. The monster of Nome Below was near, and she would not let frost, or the warnings of the old ones get to her. She had slain the Tiger of Beijing Below, and wrestled alligators of size beyond what these old men could imagine. She did not put her life in other places, in duck or Robin eggs. She would face the beast and she would conquer it, or she would die. There was no other option.

She walked through the drifts, the weather unfamiliar to her. She had covered her leather in fur, and traded her boots for warmer, fur-lined ones. She had paid in pelts, for that was the main form of barter here in Nome Below.

She walked until the sun was low in the sky, until night was a breath away. She walked until her very bones felt frozen, as if they had changed to ice and every breath made her very teeth like little icicles. She walked until she came to a great cave, until she saw the beast. A great white bear surveyed her. Had it not been for the eyes, she might have mistaken it for a great snow drift, a covered mountain.

She lifted her spear as the creature, covered in thick white fur charged. She ducked the first swipe of the creature, with claws as long as her arm. The second hit her across the chest. The pain was sudden, and terrible, yet she used it to calm herself, to focus. Panic was what would kill a hunter quicker than a beast's claw. Howling wind slipped through the rent coat.

The creature roared, perhaps in premature triumph, or was it rage? Its fetid breath was on her, the only warm thing she'd felt since she last left the inhabited places of Nome Below.

She willed her arm to work, and lifted her spear right into the bear's mouth as it lowered to take a bite of her.

Her mark hit true. The beast fell with a last scream of pain. She lay there, her eyes flitting shut, her head lolling.

_So this is how I die_, she thought.

And then. _I have slain the beast of Nome Below. It is a good day to die._

*

It was cold. So cold. Hunter woke to the sound and feeling of something, someone upon her. She opened her frosty lashes to find not wolves, but a woman. Through the winds and the white was color. A woman walked closer, her skin a clear, perfect porcelain. She looked old in a way that was youth preserved, a body mummified in snow.

"Hunter," she said, her voice a sound like a rustle of silk. "I've known you a long time, yet you've not known me."

She touched her cheek with the back of her hand. "How beautiful. I always consider predators the most lovely of creatures."

The woman bent until her lips touched hers, and the rime and as cold as falling beneath icy waters. And when she arose and clawed her way through the dark, freezing night, Hunter too was cold, but it no longer bothered her.

"I took your life and I gave you life," she said.

An endless life, and endless winter.

"You cannot go above. Our kind cannot live in the light of above. We are to be creatures of the night, the below, the dark."

Hunter nodded, her mouth dry.

"I am Lady Serpentine, you shall work for me and I shall teach you how to live.. I will make you the greatest hunter that has ever been."

She offered her hand, and Hunter took it and followed her into the black vast night.

*

She had wanted a fur coat, and Hunter had given her one. The great mink which had been the size of a tram, with eyes as large as dark caves, and a gaping maw that was red with blood. Not a hen's blood, but human.

She laid it down before her, and watched as Serpentine's eyes widened. She'd bartered what she could of the meat and brought the hide to her, all raw and bloody, for that was how Serpentine preferred the gifts given to her.

The Serpentine that regarded her was a predator, ruby lips parted. Her hands could tear through leather so easily, but she only eased the clothes down and kissed her. Everything was ice, scintillating white breaths of ecstasy. Still, she could _feel_, beneath Serpentine's fingers, everything was new, every sense was beautiful, even the shock of the pain, skin numbing, flesh blue.

Lady Serpentine was always a most appreciative master.

*

"One day I will leave here and hunt other grounds," Hunter said.

"You can never leave entirely. I own your life. One day you will return to me, living or dead," Serpentine replied.

She touched down her, over her breast, pale white and dusk.

"I accept that deal."

Serpentine chuckled.

"It is not as if you had any choice in the matter,"

Then she nuzzled to her neck, and they bedded down, two predators of the night full up with rapture.

*

So it came a long time later, when Hunter had gone to slay other beasts, and finally lost, that her battered body returned to Lady Serpentine. She looked down at the body of the woman she had known and let her hand against her face, as she once had the first meeting.

The sisters carried up the spear, and she took the body of Hunter. A shell, nothing more.

She laid Hunter down when they came to their abode, on a bed of silks and finery, all her own.  
She kissed her once again, focusing the cold, spreading it until Hunter's dusky skin was covered in rime.

And the ghost-Hunter, now more Velvet than before, opened her eyes. She was webbed over with dusting of spidery white veins beneath her skin.

"Now your title has gone to Richard Mayhew, uplander. Now, you belong to me.."

Hunter breathed a ragged sigh through her broken ribs. She would not be able to feel the pain through the cold. It would numb her until the ribs healed, but everything she touched would turn to frost.

First had been a mere flirtation with the night; now she was stitched in its fiber, and made from it through and through.


End file.
